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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24389464">...Would Smell As Sweet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/spfuzz/pseuds/spfuzz'>spfuzz</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Three Loves, Four Seasons [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fluff, Humor, Other, Post-Canon, Season fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:42:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,828</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24389464</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/spfuzz/pseuds/spfuzz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mai gets the best birthday presents from her husband.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aang/Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Three Loves, Four Seasons [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731352</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>73</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>...Would Smell As Sweet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is internally consistent with the rest of "Three Loves, Four Seasons," though two of our three usual lovers are definitely not present.  </p><p>Maiko, late spring, plum blossoms.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“And here are the gifts from Team Avatar.”</p><p>Fire Lady Mai smiled in thanks as her husband brought the stack of boxes to her. The Royal Family had established a tradition of celebrating their birthdays privately the day before public festivities.</p><p>This had come from then-Fire Lord Ozai hiding the fact that his eldest child and heir was born on the winter solstice – a day when Agni’s light was furthest from His people, an obvious ill omen for a Fire Lord.</p><p>Zuko’s public birthday was the day after, but his mother and stepfamily – and later his broader family – would celebrate on his true birthday a day before the nation. Mai appreciated the privacy and had quietly adopted it herself, as had Lady Kiyi.</p><p>Minamoto no Azula, Lady-Abbess of the Ho-o-jin, didn’t celebrate birthdays – a habit of monastic life. Her brother and sister-in-law took tea at the Akaikabe-ji every year on the same day. Some older nobles remarked that the date – always at the end of spring, dry and clear before the clouds of rainy early summer would come – was close to a festival dedicated to the blessings of the storm spirits in the days of Azulon and Ozai. The same old-timers didn’t share this too widely. The Abbess had left her past in the past, and survivors of the purges knew better than to attract Fire Lady Mai’s attention by saying her sister-in-law and former best friend’s name too loudly.</p><p>So, with the nation asleep in their beds and their friends en route by boat, bison, or ostrich horse in early spring, Mai celebrated her thirty-third birthday in the private wing of the Palace of the Dragon’s Pearl in the Caldera. Children had been packed off to bed, her in-laws took their leave, and four hours after sunset, Mai was alone with her husband in their chambers, the smell of plum blossoms in the early spring night wafting through an open window.</p><p>She knew what Zuko’s official gift would be – she had picked out the land on which they would build the new teachers’ school that the Fire Lady would personally sponsor, and Ursa had been quietly pleased her daughter-in-law chose to give royal patronage to a cause so dear to her own heart. But, as was her custom, she opened his box first.</p><p>She nearly gasped at the gorgeous twin <em>jian</em> she was presented with. Each balanced for one-handed use, the swords seemed fit naturally to her hands. The scabbards were equipped with straps to set them at her waist or back, and the swords themselves emerged with less than a whisper from their sheaths. The patterns along the handles alternated. One handle – the one that came with the red scabbard, she noticed, was lined with intricately branches of plum blossoms, ending with a bell on the pommel, with the intricate and watery look of wootz steel from the crucibles below the Eastern Air Temple. The other, black-sheathed sword had the same wootz blade, but a slightly different design on the handle. Rather than the crowded and crooked banches of a plum tree in bloom, the handle and scabbard had filigree of the stems, buds, and blooms and different five-petaled flower – one closer to the ground – ending in two dancers’ fans.</p><p>Mai cocked an eyebrow at her husband. He nodded, stepping back to give her room. Mai always preferred knives and throwing stars to pin opponents from a distance, but Zuko’s experience as the Blue Spirit came from bitter experience against Mai dual-wielding double-edged swords. She went through her drills slowly, twin blades flashing as she moved bare feet.</p><p>Upon ending, she saluted her husband and sheathed the swords. “Not bad, husband of mine. How long did it take you?”</p><p>Zuko grinned happily; she hadn’t had new swords for years. “I had a lot of help. Toph dug out the iron, and Aang found the air nomads willing to smelt the ingots. Sokka and Piandao did most of the forging, with Azula and I working the flame and Aang and a couple acolytes on bellows. Ty Lee knew your preferred weights for blades and helped balance and measure the pommels.”</p><p>“And the designs?” Mai appreciated the wordplay, but was curious about the second blade.</p><p>“Sokka and Katara, with a little help from me. It’s narwhal-rhino ivory from the South Pole. I’ve saved the rest of the teeth in case you wanted more for other blades. We agreed that you should have blades that reflected you, not some generic hypothetical Fire Lady. I figured we’d make Izumi’s with Katara and some water symbology –”</p><p>Zuko started babbling. He always let his mouth run away when he was hiding something from her.</p><p>“And I’m sure we will she’s stopped growing, darling, but be a dear and let’s get through these gifts? Speaking of which, where are Sokka’s?”</p><p>Zuko, slightly surprised by the abrupt turn of phrase, dug for the box. Mai opened it. Just as she expected.<br/>
<br/>
“A couple new whetstones from the South – oh, that oil will go well on the swords, he’s so thoughtful – and a bundle of fine linen robes and sarashi from the Earth Kingdom.” Mai looked up at her husband.</p><p>Zuko, for all his years on the throne and the unreasoning fear his scar continued to inspire in people, could hide expressions from almost everyone. But she caught his amusement right before his face closed. And even closed he couldn’t hide what he was thinking anyway. Not from any of his lovers. He shared too many secrets with Mai, Katara, and Aang for that.</p><p>“My love, our fourth anniversary was quite a while back. Why does Sokka keep sending me gifts made out of linen?”</p><p>Zuko laughs, a little too quickly, “I haven’t the faintest, dear; I’m sure it’s just a private joke of his.”</p><p>“I thought so, too, until you admitted to helping design those swords. Explain yourself.” Mai hated boredom, and this didn’t sound boring quite at all.</p><p>Zuko turned red and shifted his feet. Mai leaned forward, the indulgent wife replaced by the interrogator. Oh, this was going to be good.<br/>
<br/>
“Well, the truth is...wemayhavebeenplayingaprankonSokka.”</p><p>Mai cocked her head. “What kind of prank?”<br/>
<br/>
“You know how the Water Tribe has a different writing system? As do the Air Nomads?”</p><p>Mai nodded; she and Katara and Aang were friends, and shared custody of her husband. She had learned a fair bit of their native languages from years of letters to and fro and from the occasional passionate exclamation or curse through the wall or down the hallway or while sparring.</p><p>Zuko took a deep breath and let it out again. “It seems that Sokka thinks your name shares characters for “MY” not “MAY.” So he thinks he puns on it with “dancer” and “linen,” not “plum blossom” or “bell.”</p><p>Mai stopped, uncharacteristically confused. Sokka should know this. Sokka liked his puns, and so did she. Her personal seal was a plum blossom over a bell in purple wax. Then it hit her.</p><p><em>He’d never seen her personal seal</em>.</p><p>Her letters were usually to Suki – either sealed with the Fire Lady’s flame-and-poppy in red wax or in under black wax stamped with the character for “Ocean” and immediately burned after reading. She couldn’t recall ever writing a personal letter <em>specifically</em> for Sokka. And he’d started using the telegraphs that had cropped up in Republic City, so there were even less chance he’d get a letter from Mai. She shook her head.</p><p>“But certainly his time with the White Lotus...the masters must have said…”</p><p>Zuko rolled his eyes. “Can you imagine Uncle Iroh or King Bumi admitting that? They love pranks. I’m sure Piandao and Pakku will use it to teach him that there’s always something new to learn, or to make him focus more on foreign languages.”</p><p>Mai reflected. Iroh and Bumi would probably think this was hilarious – Sokka thinking he was so clever, and getting his best friend’s wife’s name <em>wrong!</em></p><p>“But Suki <em>has to know! </em>Aang, Ty Lee, Katara, <em>somebody</em> has to know enough of our original characters to say!”</p><p>Zuko shook his head. “Aang, Katara, and Sokka are never in the same place long enough to idly talk languages. Toph loves the joke. Suki speaks and reads our language, but Ty Lee’s sworn her to secrecy.”</p><p>Mai’s eye twitched, ever so slightly. “<em>Ty Lee</em> has sworn <em>her commander and Sokka’s wife to secrecy?” </em></p><p>Zuko nodded. “She loves the prank, and she thinks you look and feel gorgeous in the linen things he sends you.”</p><p>Mai was shocked into stillness at the absurdity. <em>All of their friends, the leadership of five nations and the Avatar himself, were hiding a joke from the King of Puns </em><em>because </em><em>the Fire Lady</em><em> looked good in linen</em>. Mai looked at her husband, a wide and almost lupine smile splitting her face.</p><p>Zuko, an unsure smile on his face matching her slow but broad Cheshire grin, walked over, old memories of the Blue Spirit lightening his feet with caution.</p><p>Mai, her voice sharp with barely-concealed disbelief and agita, asked “I swear to Agni and by all the gods and spirits, I <em>cannot believe you’ve kept this from him for so long</em>. How long?!”</p><p>Zuko said, “Well, those first letters you sent to Katara for her twentieth? When I went down there?”</p><p>Mai’s eyes bugged out as her efforts to choke back a laugh failed. <em>TEN </em><em>YEARS?!</em></p><p>Mai pulled herself up right and threw her arms around Zuko, kissing him between laughs. “Who the hell planned this?”<br/>
<br/>
Zuko smiled against her skin. “Oh, this was all me. I wanted one thing – just one – I could have over Sokka for all of his jokes.”</p><p>Mai kissed him deeply. “Well, husband, you can also hold this over him. Remember when he said at our wedding that he was so frustrated he could never make me laugh?”</p><p>“And then I told him that you raising an eyebrow was the equivalent of him falling out of a chair, and he fell out of his?”<br/>
<br/>
Mai smiled. “Exactly.” She smiled wickedly. “</p><p>Now you know that he’s actually made me laugh – and you’re the only one who saw or heard it.”</p><p>Zuko hugged her again. “Isn’t it supposed to be <em>your</em> birthday?”</p><p>Mai giggled. “Oh, that’s the loveliest present I’ve ever gotten. Not just the swords, though they’re beautiful. And a nice touch with the design. Nobody will guess I can fight with two full jian, and if I need to operate anonymously, the black one has no obvious references to me.”<br/>
<br/>
Zuko, pleased that he’d read his wife so well, kissed her forehead. “You’re welcome. Did you want to take them out for a spin?”<br/>
<br/>
Mai thought for a second, and snickered. “No.”</p><p>Suddenly, a knife appeared in her left hand, cutting Zuko’s sarashi clean open, a second hand pulling off his kimono.</p><p>“I have other uses for that wicked head of yours,” Mai said, pulling her husband onto their bed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was inspired by research into this series which you'll see in upcoming chapters of In The Bleak Midwinter and howling with frustration upon realizing I was mispronouncing Mai's name. Special thanks to the Discord and Philosopher_King in particularly for supporting me as I realized this. Thanks to them also for the bit about the solstice and Zuko's "official" birthday (100 percent taken from "Angle of Incidence" which is really quite lovely and you should read it.)</p><p>Special dedication to a pack of Vietnamese friends in high school, who kept me in the dark about a specific phrase for a week, which led me to poor Sokka getting punked. </p><p>This is not the intended fic for spring, but I felt it might be fun here. I've hidden references to two beloved children's books of my generation somewhere in the fic. First person to comment them gets...hell, I don't know. Good karma.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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